The battle's done, and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?
... a blog by Marc Lynch

June 20, 2007

Anbar Salvation Council head skips town?

This story from al-Malaf is currently the talk of the forums: Sitar Abu Risha, head of the Anbar Salvation Council, has allegedly fled Iraq with $75 million that the Americans had given him to fight al-Qaeda. The story links his flight to the near-collapse of the Anbar Salvation Council over infighting among its leadership (which jibes with recent reporting in the Washington Post). It claims that he simply never distributed the American cash to the fighters, who are now threatening to go on strike if they don't get paid. Seeing as how the Anbar Salvation Council has for months now been portrayed as the great American hope in the battle against al-Qaeda, if this story turns out to be true - a big if, given the shaky sourcing to this point - then it would be a rather embarrassing fiasco. "The Anbar model", indeed. I haven't seen this officially reported anywhere, and right now I have
no way of checking its accuracy - but thought it worth passing on a
juicy rumour just in case it turns out to be true.

Comments

Seeing as how the Anbar Salvation Council has for months now been portrayed as the great American hope in the battle against al-Qaeda

Didn't you yourself regretfully admit that Anbar had improved tremendously in the last 6 months? And now you are acting like it's been a hoax all along.

"The Anbar model", indeed. I haven't seen this officially reported anywhere, and right now I have no way of checking its accuracy - but thought it worth passing on a juicy rumour just in case it turns out to be true.

Yeah. Right. And would anybody but your fans buy into that preposterous notion? Your loyalties are pretty clear.

By the way... are you British? I noticed some of your spellings are of the British sort. I thought you were an American who had converted to Al Qaeda. But maybe you are Britain's problem?

What has intrigued me about Anbar is not the melting away of AlQ, after all that is their modus operandi ... but what happened to the rest of the insurgency? Why haven't they been attcking the US forces there? Is it because AlQ was previously mostly doing the attacks anyway, or did the ASC manage to expel them too or are they lying doggo for some reason?

Whatever the Shiekhs' motives, the transformation in Anbar has been remarkable in such a short space of time. One would expect if the ASC is now falling apart, then Sunni attacks will resume as a 2nd front to the Diyala offensive? Will be a good barometer, imo.

Very interesting post (I for one appreciate the passing along of stories from al-Malaf, since I can't read Arabic) and would love to know the follow-up - did he really make off with 75 mil? Goodness that's cool.

What has intrigued me about Anbar is not the melting away of AlQ, after all that is their modus operandi ...

You call that a sensible comment? A sensible comment would be to ask why our host spent moths claiming that the claimed improvements in Anbar were nothing but American disinformation. And then 2 months ago, he did a flip flop on that but then came up with some crazy reasoning why it still wasn't what it seemed to be. And now he is obviously very pleased that the folks who've been fighting AQ in Anbar seem to be at odds with each other.

He wouldn't be repeating this "juicy rumor" if it made the US look good, would he? He'd be ridiculing it up on down. Because that is what American public diplomacy is all about - bashing America. Isn't it?

When is Marc gonna get honest about whose interests he really has in mind? I think it's pretty clear to everyone by now - or it should be - that the only Arabs who participate on this blog are the "Angry Arab" crowd of malcontents and virtual jihadis. I ask again, how is that "public diplomacy" when everything he says is embraced so warmly by the very people that the US is trying to destroy?

Right, but Ali Hatem is a much more reliable and less obviously opportunist figure, and he's been making a surge in the media of late. The 75 million is surely troubling, but Abu Risha is pretty much out the door already anyway, and the ASC still seems pretty strong. If anything, this will just strengthen Ali Hatem's hold on it by confirming everything he's already said about Abu Risha. Since he's more adamantly anti-US, this may even give the ASC more legitimacy.

Craig, get your weak troll ass out of this forum if you're just going to make everything political.

What is the big deal here? The “ASC” is a clique used by Saddam without its name tag; now, it is used by the rapists’ aggressors. When the rapists’ terrorists leave them behind in defeat, (your prayers for a man god Jesus wouldn’t reverse the inevitability) they will serve who ever controls Baghdad. If the terrorist in the Whitehouse knew buying the sheiks is cheaper than breaking their homes in the middle of the night or killing them with 500 lbs. bombs from the air, he would have chosen the former before the spread of the Iraqi resistance. Does that mean the invading terrorists will have an easier time in Iraq now that ASC is on their payrolls? There are more American invading troops killed in the past six months (555) than the six months prior to ASC’s formation (468). This war is bigger than anyone can imagine. If the aggressors defeated Iraqi Resistance fighters, they would have gone in raping rampage: Iran, Syria, and Lebanon spreading “alqaida” in those countries like it did in Iraq. The bully who spends 700 billion dollars a year to kill and maim couldn’t even accomplish to defeat a rag tag homegrown movement! The whole world is taking notice of it.

He got mad at me a couple of years ago (yes, he's been trolling that long) because he thought I was Saudi because I could read/write/speak Arabic and knew a lot about Saudi politics and culture.

He somehow felt cheated when he learned I was just a "regular American" who could speak Arabic, had traveled extensively in the Middle East and North Africa and I happen to be married to a Saudi woman.

He hates Muslims/Islam and Arabs, yet he spends extensive time at their sites all over the internet.

He is a real idiot, but take him with a grain of salt like the dozens of other blogs he has been to and trolled at. He is nothing more than a keyboard warrior, but if you get him on one of his good days he'll tell you about his days in the Marines and all of the friends he lost in Lebanon, or you'll get a story about how he married a Chinese lady but was too stupid to learn Chinese.

"the Anbar Salvation Council has for months now been portrayed as the great American hope in the battle against al-Qaeda"

It would probably be more accurate to describe it as the great American hope in Iraq, period. The original intent of the Surge was to facilitate top-down political reconciliation. This is now being quietly downplayed with the new unofficial intent of the Surge being to facilitate Anbar-style "Awakenings" across Iraq.